What I Shared with MadameNoire About Why We Are Drawn to Toxic Partners

In March 2021, MadameNoire published a piece on toxic relationships and reached out to me for a clinical perspective on one of the most common patterns I see in my work — the pull toward partners who are complicated, inconsistent, or emotionally harmful, and the frustration of repeating that pattern without understanding why.

The article was written by journalist Lia World Traveler and drew on my clinical experience to explore what is really driving those choices, because in most cases, it is not about bad judgment or a character flaw. It is about something that began long before the relationship in question.

Why the Pattern Usually Starts in Childhood

To understand adult relationship behavior, I almost always trace it back to early experience. A childhood marked by trauma, neglect, or emotional inconsistency creates patterns in how we relate to other people — patterns that do not simply resolve when we reach adulthood. Instead, they show up in who we are attracted to, and in what feels familiar.

As I shared in the article, a childhood experience of trauma, abuse, or neglect can be recreated in adult relationships as an unconscious attempt to heal what was broken early on. The person we choose is not random. There is often an emotional logic to it that is only visible in retrospect, and only when we are willing to look at where the pattern actually started.

What the Warning Signs Actually Look Like

One of the things I emphasized in the piece is the difference between dramatic warning signs and subtle ones. The obvious red flags: a history of failed relationships, documented patterns of control or jealousy, attempts to isolate, are important. But the subtler ones are often more telling. Unexplained absences. A consistent pattern of inconsistencies. The experience of needing emotional recovery after spending time with someone. That last one is significant — if being with someone regularly costs you something you have to recover from, that is information worth taking seriously.

What Actually Helps

The shift I see in clients who break these patterns is not primarily about identifying better partners. It is about developing confidence in their own inner discernment, and that requires doing the internal work first. Examining what unhealed trauma is influencing their choices. Noticing where self-esteem or emotional availability is affecting who they are drawn to. Working with a trusted therapist to trace the family patterns and origins that are still operating beneath the surface.

As I said in the article, toxic partners do not operate in isolation. There are almost always dynamics within us that allow the pattern to take hold. That is not a criticism, it is a place to start.

What the Work of Actually Breaking the Pattern Looks Like

Understanding why you are drawn to toxic partners is necessary. It is not, by itself, sufficient. I say this directly because I see it often — clients who arrive with significant insight into their patterns, who can articulate exactly where the attachment style came from and trace it clearly to childhood dynamics, and who are still making the same choices. Awareness is the beginning of the work, not the end of it.

What actually shifts the pattern is a different kind of work. The kind that happens at the level of the nervous system and emotional experience, not only the cognitive understanding of it. This means working with what the body does when it encounters a familiar dynamic. The pull that feels like chemistry but is actually recognition. The comfort of the known, even when what is known is harmful. Changing that response requires more than knowing it is there.

In my work with clients navigating this, the focus is rarely on the toxic partner themselves. It is on the internal conditions that made the relationship feel possible or even inevitable, the self-worth that was eroded long before this relationship began, the definition of love that was shaped in an environment where love was inconsistent or conditional, the belief that this version of connection is what they are entitled to or capable of.

That is where therapy goes that self-help cannot easily reach. Not because the insight is not available (it often is) but because the emotional and relational experience of being in a different kind of relationship with a therapist, one that is consistent and boundaried and attuned, begins to rewire what feels normal. Over time, healthy feels less foreign. And the pull toward what was familiar begins to lose its grip.

This is slow work. It is also real work. And it is available, to people who are ready to stop explaining the pattern and start actually changing it.

Read the full article in MadameNoire →Why Are We Drawn to Toxic Partners? A Psychotherapist Explains.

If you recognize these patterns in your own relationships and are ready to understand where they come from, I work with high-achieving professionals and caregivers navigating relational wounds and the patterns that developed from them. Schedule a consultation →

You may also find my work on Trauma Recovery & Emotional Healing and Identity, Faith & Purpose relevant to what you are carrying.